(It's really not about the cup.)

Letters

So, we reached a milestone yesterday, but I really think that I should put it in some perspective, give it some context.

Frances has had many milestones to reach over the years. You wouldn’t know it unless you had been around us at the time, but there was a point at which we didn’t know if Frances would walk.

She was the “floppy baby” that parenting books sometimes describe; some of her reflexes that she should have outgrown by seven months remained while other reflexes were absent.

She was delayed in sitting, rolling over, standing, and crawling. Plus, she had pronated feet (which later required orthotic inserts).

Weekly visits with occupational and physical therapists improved her gross motor skills and her coordination, and she was diagnosed with hypotonia (low muscle tone). She did, of course, walk steadily by 16 months, and she ran with breath-taking confidence by the age of two.

Also, from the age of four months, it had been clear that she needed to have her eyes evaluated. At five months, she was diagnosed with severe bilateral strabismus (both eyes crossed) and, though she was seeing out of both eyes in alternation, there was the very real risk that she could lose her vision. It was the worst case her paediatrician had ever seen.

She also got her first pair of glasses upon her first visit with the paediatric ophthalmologist at five months.

Finally, once she was walking and had had eye surgery at 18 months to correct the alignment of her eyes, the rehabilitation centre asked me if there might be any more concerns of mine to address.

I didn’t realize that I was being gently nudged, but, besides her eyes, walking, and those other infant milestones, I really couldn’t think of anything.

It was true that Frances would require the daily use of eye patches for several years due to an “over correction” during the surgery (which meant that one eye turned outwards), but that was being addressed and it wasn’t their area of concern anyway. So, I was bewildered.

Then, a clinician asked if language was a difficulty. By this time, I hadn’t noticed until that very moment that, in fact, Frances was not developing new words or even really using the words that she had acquired so early.

So, if you’re still following…In summary, at first we didn’t know if she would sit, crawl, rollover, or walk. Then, we didn’t know if she would lose her vision or be able to see well enough to not be legally blind.

Now, at 18 months, we didn’t know if Frances was going to be able to speak. A speech-language pathologist evaluated her: she scored very high with receptive language and lower than average with expressive language.

From that point on, Frances and I attended early-communication groups on a weekly basis for about a year which, for a while, were concurrent with the gross motor groups that had got her walking.

She didn’t speak in these groups, and it made me nervous. But, one day, about seven months into the groups, during the “pick a song and sing together” portion of the session, I realized that I could hear the faintest little voice singing “Old Macdonald Had A Farm” for the first time! So, we knew that she would be able to speak which was an incredibly emotional moment. (I can see that moment so clearly: she was sitting on my lap while I sat cross-legged on the carpet.)

Did I mention in all of this that nobody suspected autism? If anyone did, nobody mentioned it even once?

But that’s another story for another time. I will say that Pink Cup Sister noticed, and would continue to notice, at this time that Frances wasn’t “emotional” and didn’t “play right”.

At any rate, Frances remains very myopic but, with glasses, her vision is now corrected to 20/20 and 20/30 which is pretty damn good.

Over the years, she has been seeing the orthoptist and the ophthalmologist every two months or every six months. We have virtually been fixtures at the children’s hospitals.

Yesterday, after more than eleven years, we were told that Frances no longer needs to be followed by the specialist for her vision and that she can see an optometrist like the rest of the Pink Cup Family!

This is an exciting milestone and, while trying to describe its significance, I have skipped over the parts where my doubts tugged at me throughout her toddlerhood and preschool years: Was there something not typical in her development? Like, for instance, she didn’t respond at all when put in a swing at the park; she never spoke a word at preschool to anyone at the facility; she didn’t like to be spoken to or to be asked questions; she didn’t like to be touched; she wouldn’t look at anybody…I really could just go on and on.

I should note that, before Frances was even three years old, I would ask several doctors and other professionals if we should be concerned about these things. Nobody was concerned, but my suspicions lingered.

Sigh… Deep down, I had always had suspicions that my daughter’s development wasn’t typical; but, if everyone who is supposed to help tells you that everything is fine…Well, then, what do you do?

I ended up doing A GREAT DEAL about it: there was a huge struggle to climb, by hook or by crook, through the different tiers of healthcare in order to have Frances examined by the right professional (a developmental paediatrician).

I promise — I will come back to that struggle and to those very important years spanning the ages of three to six-and-a-half. I know that I can think about it and write about it, but it’s so difficult for me that it has be at a slow pace.

Suffice it to say for now that the eventual diagnosis of high functioning autism spectrum disorder was very much anticipated and welcomed. We actually celebrated, but I’ll leave off here.

When she was 18 months, it seemed hard to get Frances’s attention. It always had been, but because of her interest in letters, I ended up noticing more acutely.

She carried around a bag of Bananagrams (letter tiles) all the time. She would shove it into my hands, and I would say, “Oh, you want me to make words for you?”

We would sit on the floor in the living room, and I would empty the bag of letter tiles. Then, I’d arrange letters into small words and read them to her.

By 24 months, she identified all letters and knew if they were upside down or sideways.

Eventually, though our letter game continued, she needed me less. One day, I said, “Are you making a word?” (In a video of this conversation, I ask her many times.) Finally, she answered, without looking up, “Letters make words.”

From that point on, I was a little uneasy about the fact that she seemed deaf so much of the time, yet she COULD hear me as she clearly demonstrated in the video. (We knew that her hearing was fine as she had been tested.) It was very confusing.

When she was 27 months, while at the ophthalmologist, I explained that the picture set was unnecessary: she could handle the letters for her exam. She was able to name all the letters that she could see, and the technician was shocked.

I explained that she wasn’t reading: Frances just knew the letters. What was even more unusual was that she had an incredible attention span with letters and could sit for an hour with her tiles (and then books).

By the age of three, though letters were still a big deal for her, Frances’s intense interest included numbers.